Awake
by SilverStarsAndMoons
Summary: This is a chaptered character sketch of Emma Pillsbury. It mostly focuses on her crush and then obsession with Will Schuester, but it also explores a little of her life and her thought process, and gives us insight into this wonderful, sweet woman.


She never brings attention to herself. That's how she was taught – be seen and not heard; keep your voice modulated and your eyes out of other people's business. And that's how she's lived, in the background of other people's lives, wearing her candy-coloured clothing in an effort to be noticed beyond her quick, polite smiles and shy recommendations for other people's lives.

She's not one to bring the spotlight to her own life. She's happy, at home with her cats, watching an old Audrey Hepburn movie and sipping a glass of her favourite white wine. And she never thought she'd want anything else, until the day she got the offer letter from William McKinley High and she met Will Schuester.

He was helping the other guidance counsellor, Mrs. Giona, reach a particularly high book on a tough-to-reach bookshelf, and she watched his back stretch out as he managed to grasp the volume and bring it down. It was one fluid motion, and in one fluid thought, she already knew she wanted to meet him.

Emma always surreptitiously looks for wedding rings on eligible men's fingers. She's quickly learned that it doesn't matter if they don't have one, though, since later on, when she met Will over the coffee pot in the teacher's lounge, he told her that he was married and that they'd just moved into a new condo downtown, by the hockey rink. He also told her he liked to watch hockey, but all she could think about was how that was only three blocks from her condo by the park.

Soon, she began to see him all the time. She originally tried to hide her mysophobia; she found it really creeps people out to know that she's terrified of germs. Men stop wanting to touch her; her back begins to hurt from being stiff all the time, from trying to allow them to touch her.

Emma hasn't had sex since she was twenty and that was an accident. She got drunk on an overhaul of Jaegermeister at a dorm party in her second week of school and slept with one of the computer science nerds. She still feels like she'll burst into tears any minute at the thought of it, and any man who's gone out with her since has never gotten near her skin. Touching happened through clothing only, and it didn't happen much at all.

The fact is, Emma wants to be touched. But she has no idea how to break her fear. When she meets Will Schuester, though, she feels like it wouldn't matter if he wanted to undress her in front of the whole school.

For the first time in her life, she feels safe. Safe with Will.

The year goes on, and she begins to try to seek him out. She looks up his schedule on the teacher's internal website and stares longingly at his classes. When he's out for prep, she appears in the library for a moment to speak to the librarian about a new shipment of pamphlets, or she makes sure she gets a refill of tea when she knows he'll be scarfing down a snack and reading the sports pages in the staff room. Soon, he starts noticing her at the coffee station or flipping slowly through an encyclopaedia at the back of the dusty library, and she starts getting bright smiles as she passes in the hall.

It takes him a good six months to start speaking to her, though.

She finds him one day in the staff room, eating a sandwich and staring intently at a student's paper, and she, in a fit of confidence, slides into the chair next to him.

"Hi," she says, her voice coming out breathlessly. "Um, do you need any help?"

He looks up, his hazel-grey eyes confused. "Um, no, that's okay. How's it going, Emma?"

She can tell that she's startled him and also that it's taken him a minute to remember her name. She inwardly cringes. "Fine, fine. I just saw that you had a bunch of papers, and, uh, I thought maybe you'd like some help, because, you know, I majored in languages at school and it's one of my teachables, but I went into guidance counselling instead and . . ." She trails off at his expression, which is amused.

"I didn't know you'd majored in languages," he replies politely, and the blush on her cheeks gets deeper.

"Yeah, uh, I took German and Spanish in college." She looks down at her hands, which are clenched tightly around her mug, and forces herself to relax.

He puts his papers aside and focuses on her. "What made you go into counselling instead?"

She leans forward, crossing her legs under the table, and opens her mouth slightly, then closes it. "Well, I just had, you know, an interest in that field . . . high school is tough, Will."

He blinks at the sound of his name, and his eyes soften. "Yeah, life is tough, you know?"

She almost tells him then that she decided to do it because of her mysophobia and how crippling it can be in her own life, but closes her mouth and smiles brightly. "What made you come to William McKinley?"

"I grew up in Lima; this is my school, actually." He looks around at the walls, smiles slightly. "I never thought I'd be the one sitting in here, though. This was sacred ground for us students."

At his upward look, she suddenly realizes why she recognized him the first time she saw him. He's pictured in the Glee club photo in the first trophy case by the north doors. She smiles.

"You must have done a lot in this school. I've seen your picture in the trophy case."

He looks animated. "Yeah, I really believe that kids should do as much as they can. Really support their school, you know? It's why I wanted to come back here. I love this school. I'm so happy I get to teach here."

He clears his throat, looks at her with more interest. "Where are you from? You have an accent I can't place."

She blushes deeply. No matter how hard she tries to get rid of the Appalachian-Virginian accent, it always seeps through. It's not that Emma's embarrassed of how she sounds, but if she were to really speak like she does around her family, she doubts anyone besides fellow Southerners could understand her. She's learned over the years to adapt different, less recognizable accents into her voice, but people always notice that she sounds different, especially in Lima.

"Small-town Virginia, just at the foot of the Appalachian mountains." She licks her lips, smiles tightly. He smiles back at her, the interest in his eyes growing.

"Ah, that's why it doesn't sound like a regular Southern accent."

"Yeah." She wants to leave this topic now. "So, where does your wife work?" She winces at the thought of talking about his wife, but anything to take the focus off of how she sounds. She finds that her accent seeps out more when she's nervous, and she doesn't want to confuse this man in front of her – the first one seemingly interested in her.

"Sheets and Things. We got married after high school. She didn't want to go to college." He looks annoyed for a minute, then his face smoothes out. "Anyway, I guess that's my prep over."

They both look at the clock simultaneously, and Emma stands, disappointed. She has a guidance appointment, but she doesn't really feel like dealing with the problems of teenagers right now. She wants to spend more time talking to Will.

Surprisingly, he looks disappointed, as well. He checks his watch. "Listen, Emma, I don't know when your prep is, or when you take lunch, but would you want to have lunch with me one day this week?"

Again with the blush; again with the stammering, the reappearance of the accent. "Gosh, Will, I'd love that. I mean, only if you want to, though. Only if you have time." Shut up, shut up.

He smiles again, the amused smile, but there's a touch of warmth behind it and she doesn't feel as stupid this time. "Okay. I'll come around to your office one day."

"Do you know where it is?" she asks stupidly, just to make him stay a moment longer.

He looks confused. "Yeah, across from Figgins, in the guidance office . . . right?"

She looks down at the table, notices a few crumbs from his sandwich left on the surface, and nods into her chest. "Yeah."

"Okay then." He leans forward for a moment, pats her shoulder sort of awkwardly, and then takes off at a trot, since the final bell for class is due to ring in another two minutes.

She sits at the dirty table and rubs her eyes in embarrassment, but a tiny part of her is triumphant: he knows who she is, now.

//~//

They start having lunch once or twice a week. At first, she eats nothing – she just drinks a bottle of water, or a cup of tea, but he starts asking her if she's feeling okay, so she starts bringing her food to the teacher's lounge instead of eating it at her Lysoled desk. However, it takes her another couple of lunch dates with Will to finally feel comfortable opening up her sealed Tupperware containers and daring to eat a few bites of salad.

She tries to clean her food before eating with him, but she doesn't trust that the minute she puts it back into her lunch bag that it's clean enough to eat again without wiping off when she takes it back out. So, she tries to get to the lunch table a few minutes early to clean her fruit and to rewash her salad leaves, but one day, he's there before she is and he's placed a second Tupperware of what looks like a casserole at her usual place.

"Hey!" His voice is bright, and he beams at her, pulling out the chair beside him. "I brought you some lunch today – I figured maybe you'd want to try Terri's Shepherd's Pie. It's so good; it's to die for, Em."

He started calling her "Em" two weeks ago. She likes it; normally she hates nicknames, especially when they come from people she doesn't know very well, but she likes when he nicknames her. Well, let's be honest: she likes when he says or does anything around her. She's content to sit back and just watch him – to just be around him.

She looks down at the Tupperware and smiles wanly. "Oh, I don't eat meat. Thank you, though. It was so nice of you to think of me, Will." It's not true, but she doesn't eat food she hasn't prepared herself or seen prepared. That includes casseroles.

His face falls. "Oh. I thought you'd like it." He stirs his fork in his own pie and looks up at her. "I never really do see you eat. Are you okay?"

"Oh, yeah, I'm fine." To please him, she dips her fork into the steaming container and tries a little bit of potato. It's really not enough to even constitute a bite, but his face relaxes as she chews quickly, and then swallows.

Almost immediately, it threatens to come back up, and she swigs quickly from her water bottle, cursing the fact that she can't be normal like everyone else. She whips her antibacterial solution out of her purse, wishing she could sanitize her esophagus. He stares at her impassively.

"Look, Em, it's okay. You don't have to eat it. But . . . I'm kind of getting worried about you. Are you germaphobic or something?"

"Why would you say that?" She hears her own voice on the air of the lunch room, high and cracked, nervous as hell. Rubbing her hands compulsively, she picks the fork up and runs the length of it across her napkin, steeling herself to take another bite.

"Well . . ." and his hand enters her field of vision, taking the fork from her fingers and placing it quietly on the table. "You don't eat, and when you do, you tend to wipe everything down about ten times before you put anything into your mouth. And I never see you eat anything that mixes together. Like this Shepherd's Pie, for instance."

She doesn't say anything, but she takes the fork back from his hands and rubs it on her napkin again. "I'm a bit of a picky eater," she says. It's true, but it's much more than that.

She wishes she could say it to him – mysophobia. It's so much more than just fear of germs. But she isn't about to let him in on anything like that. Men have run from her, once they realize that mysophobia isn't something she has, it's something that has her. By the throat, if she's absolutely honest. And explaining it would be so freeing, so much easier if he knew that she just can't when it comes to eating and drinking and living. She just can't.

He takes the Tupperware back and offers her some grapes, instead. "How about some fruit? I washed them, but I imagine you'll want to wash them again."

She suddenly feels stupid. "You know what, Will, I . . . have to go. I've got an SAT lesson tonight I have to prepare for, and lunch is almost over, anyway." She stands up and he looks disappointed, but holds the grapes out to her.

She squeezes her eyes shut for a moment, feels the tears behind them, and then shakes her head. "Thanks, but I'm just . . . not very hungry today."

As she says it, her stomach growls audibly, and she coughs a little, trying to cover the sound. But she knows he heard it and his face sets, almost angrily.

She ends up running from the lunchroom, trying to ignore the sharp clack of her heels on the linoleum floor, but more so trying to ignore the look on his face.

When she gets to her office, she closes the door, pulls the blinds, scrubs the finish on the wooden desk angrily and then drops her head on the tabletop and lets the dirty tears flow all over the clean surface.

What's more, today? She doesn't care, because she hates herself for what she is.

//~//

She thought that was it – after the lunch incident, she did her best to avoid him altogether. He already knew way too much about her compulsions; she already made too much of a fool out of herself in front of him. It was easy to sneak around, avoid his prep times, and make sure she either left for lunch or locked herself in her office at an odd hour to eat. If her stomach growled through student appointments or in front of Figgins at the weekly guidance staff meeting, she considered it a small price to pay.

But what was weird was that he just wouldn't leave her alone. He started showing up all the time – in the staff room when she got her morning tea, outside her office fixing flyers and submitting attendance records from his class, and getting into his car as she left for the day.

And every time she saw him, he smiled, and opened his mouth to call to her, and she blushed, turning away, or pretended she didn't see him.

He cornered her outside the gym one day between classes. She'd been coming back from the bathroom and hadn't considered that he might be wandering the halls when he was supposed to be teaching.

"Emma. Wait." His face was so sweet, so eager and insistent, and she stood quietly, not knowing what else to do. Her eyes were wide and she felt her stomach quivering at the close proximity, but also out of nervousness. Frankly, she knew she'd been a bitch lately. She'd done it to protect herself, but she couldn't shake the feeling that he'd been more hurt by the silent treatment than other men would be.

"Listen, I don't know what I did, but I'm sorry. I'm having lonely lunches and . . . well, are you okay? Can I help? I just . . . I miss you, I guess. I thought we were friends."

It was a simple, childish speech, and she blushed in embarrassment for him and for herself, but also found herself charmed by his honesty. The fact is, she thinks about him every second of every day. It's not like she could have lied then. She can't lie now.

"You didn't do anything, Will. Gosh, it's my fault, I've really been awful." She nodded, feeling her heart swell at the thought of hurting him in any way. "Just been going through some stuff, I guess. You know, trying to figure life out a bit."

Surprisingly, he didn't push. "Yeah. I know how that can be."

"Will, honestly, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to . . . well, I didn't mean to hurt your feelings."

"About lunch that day – "

"You know what, let's not even go there." She smiled, forcing it out, forcing the cheerfulness to the surface. "Let's meet for coffee this afternoon, okay?"

He'd blinked, and then smiled. "Okay."

She left, tossing her red hair over her shoulders, knowing that he was staring at her back as she walked, and when she rounded the corner into her office, she couldn't keep the grin off her face.

Maybe it would be okay.

//~//

He started Glee the next week and it was then she truly fell in love with him. It went beyond attraction; she started to overlook potentially annoying habits to focus on his love for the kids; his passion for music, his way of needing things to work out. And she started to get swept up in the intensity.

There were days when she forgot he was married, completely. Where she could have leaned over to kiss him, and she knew he would have accepted it. She started to let her guard down. She began to eat in front of him – a big step.

"Em, you're gonna eat lunch in here again?" His voice startles her from her obsessive grape cleaning, and she looks up, her face breaking into a smile.

"Yeah, you know, why not? Everyone else is in here. I don't want to be a hermit," she grins at him, and he grins back, sitting down beside her and opening up his Tupperware of the latest Terri creation. Emma often wondered what this wife of his must be like, cooking for him, cleaning the house, maybe, while he taught all day.

Ken Tanaka, the football coach who'd been obsessively chasing Emma almost as obsessively as she'd been chasing Will, slides into the seat across from Will and Emma's face falls.

"Hi, Ken."

"Hi, Emma. Listen, I've got two tickets to the Monster Truck rally tomorrow night – you wouldn't want to go . . .?"

In a way, she feels bad for him. He doesn't have a chance; she can barely be near him – but he tries so hard and he really is so nice. She wishes she could say yes, just so that she wouldn't have to watch his small eyes grow smaller and then have to avoid the teacher's lounge for the rest of the day.

"I can't, Ken. Not my thing," she blurts, her voice going up higher at the end.

"Yeah, Ken, Em doesn't seem like the type of girl who'd enjoy monster trucks," adds Will, shaking his head, fondly believing that Emma can't see him. She smiles inwardly as he tips a broad wink at Ken, who immediately straightens up, nodding back.

"Okay, M&M. We'll figure something out," says Ken, and she grins wanly back at him.

When Ken leaves, she turns to Will. "Look, Will, I don't know what you and Ken have going on, but I'm not interested in him."

"Aw, come on, Em. Give him a chance. He's a nice guy, and he really likes you." Even his words sound half-hearted, though, and she shakes her head.

"He's not really my type."

"Well, I'm sure he could learn to like Purell."

She rolls her eyes. "Look, I just don't like Ken Tanaka. And Will, I'm sorry, but you've been pushing him on me for the past week and a half. You think that I can't see you winking at him, but I can."

Will has the grace to look ashamed. Emma sighs. "I don't want to be rude."

"You're not," he says softly, and looks down at his food. "I just want to see you happy, Emma."

"I don't look happy?"

In response, he looks into her eyes, deeply. She gets caught up in the silver-grey flecks in his hazel depths before she hears his voice coming from what seemed like a million miles away.

"No one wants to be alone, Emma."

She knows it's time to end the conversation there. "Look, Will, I appreciate the thought –"

"So you'll give him a chance? One date, Em, I swear, if you hate him, I'll stop."

She stands up, exasperated. "Will, you're not listening to me. And if you were, you'd have heard about twenty minutes ago that I just am not interested, okay?" Her accent comes through strongly, and she begins to hate herself for yelling at this man who wants to help.

He doesn't know her at all. She won't let him know her at all. And she hates herself more for that.

"I have to go," she whispers, but he stops her with a hand on her arm.

"Stop running away. I'm sorry I made you mad, but I just want you to be happier than you are. You just seem so . . . alone, Emma."

"Yeah, well, that's not really your concern, is it, Will? You've got to go along to get along." And then she curses herself for using this tone and these words with him, because inevitably, he just shuts down.

"Okay. Okay, I'm sorry, Emma."

In her office, she draws the blinds and screws a Windex cloth into her hand, scrubbing the insides of the windows so hard she thinks they may crack under the strain. And while she scrubs the abused windows, she lets the tears drip down her face, knowing that in twenty minutes, she'll bury it under the surface.

And she'll go out, and bravely face the rest of the world, like she always does, praying that for once, Will might be able to see past her smokescreens and into her soul. And that terrifies her and excites her all at once – these double emotions killing her from day to day.

No, she isn't happy.

But she could be.

That keeps her going.


End file.
